Those Frontera Tortilla Chips Will Now Be Made By ConAgra

By Anthony Todd in Food on Sep 26, 2016 8:43PM

Rick Bayless dishes out food at Taste of the Nation Chicago in 2011. (Photo credit: Toque and Bottle Advisory)

Big news in the packaged food world: Rick Bayless's brand, Frontera Foods, has been acquired. From now on, when you chow down on those bags of expensive tortilla chips, they'll be coming to you courtesy of ConAgra.

The Tribune reported on the deal today, which includes the packaged foods part of Frontera but not any of Bayless's restaurants. ConAgra, which also owns Hebrew National, Orville Redenbacher's, Hunt's, Slim-Jim, Reddi-wip and lots of other familiar brands, recently moved their offices to downtown Chicago and this is their first acquisition since the move.

This will certainly allow the Frontera brand to dramatically scale up. Frontera was reportedly concerned because they weren't making enough products to meet demand. The manufacturing process and locations will remain the same (the chips, for example, are made by El Milagro on the south side of Chicago), and while no numbers have been disclosed about the deal, we're sure Bayless did pretty well.